Humor Me

02/28/2012

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I have a gift. Two gifts, since I'm dashingly handsome. Three, if you include my prodigious production of children. Alright, four gifts -- I have an ego the size of New Jersey. But throw those other three blessings of natural-born talent away and the biggest gift I have is my strength in humor writing.

While the paragraph above may not be the best example of my work -- oh admit it, brilliance just oozed out of every word -- it gives a sense at what I do best. Yes, I can produce the blandest of web content when needed. I can also make the reader shed more tears than those Bronte chicks ever could. But writing humor produces jolts of adrenaline which fly onto the page. And when I read the comments on how funny people think my work is, well...my ego increases to the size of Pennsylvania.

I love humor writing so much that I'm going to do something with it I've never done before -- I'm going to teach it.

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Reach Out and Critique Someone

02/21/2012

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So you're part of a critique group which you adore, even though they tend to rip your erotic Victorian vampire time travel novel to shreds. But it's more about the camaraderie anyway, so their harsh critiques don't hurt as much. Which is why you try to make each meeting in person.

Unfortunately, there are times when your schedule and that of the group just don't click. Perhaps it's due to a meeting at work, or a sick child, or a madcap cross-country chase as you try to evade the police. Whatever the reason, it kills you not to make the regular meeting. And while you daydream at your meeting, clean puke from the carpet, or speed across I-70, you try to come up with a solution which can allow you to participate in the group without being there in person.

The answer -- the newfangled device known as the Internet.
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Writing and Football

02/13/2012

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I'm not a devout football follower. Though forced to watch endless hours of coverage when I was younger, thanks to the near-obsessive, screaming-at-the-television fandom of my father, my tastes leaned more to baseball. Still, I ended up as a casual observer who knows team names, understands the rules, and could rattle off something to an avid, body-painted fan without coming off as too ignorant.

This means I'm able to detect when a team, like the New England Patriots during Super Bowl XLVI, decides to phone in a game. From quarterback Tom Brady's idiotic Safety during his very first possession, to the linebackers' ineffectual runs through the sea of New York Giant defensive tackles, to the butterfingers of their pass receivers, the last Super Bowl was not one for the Patriot's highlight reel.

Fans can blame the team's poor performance on injury, the age of some of the more veteran players, or aliens who decided to take over their bodies. In the end, the reason the Patriots lost was one simple thing -- they didn't want it bad enough. And this got me thinking -- always a bad idea for someone. In some warpped way, writing is very much like football when it comes to wanting it bad enough.

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